Gail just confirmed over twitter that the new Batgirl editor, Brian
Cunningham, that she is no longer the writer of Batgirl, despite her
refuting rumours that she'd been replaced just earlier this week. Hm.

I
will admit that despite my not being as much of a fan of her current
Batgirl run as I've been of her other work, this still kind of saddens
me, if only because she always seemed to be having a ball when it came
to her writing and promoting this work.

And right after the
all-female team-up book she'd spent a year working on was rejected right
out of the gate when she pitched it too (probably because she wanted to
use Steph in it).

Wonder why it happened, it wasn't as if she wanted to leave or that the book wasn't successful...

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog that was meant to be satirical and funny. In rereading it over the past day I don't think it's funny. The attempted humor in the blog does not represent my actual feelings. However, I can see where statements were poorly worded and offensive to many. I'm sorry and regret making them at all. People who are familiar with me as evidenced by my Facebook page and other mediums know that I'm an outspoken proponent for the rights of the gay and lesbian community, women and anyone who feels disenfranchised, and it kills me that some other outsider like myself, despite his or her gender or sexuality, might feel hurt or attacked by something I said. We're all in the same camp, and I want to do my best to make this world a better place for all of us. I'm learning all the time. I promise to be more careful with my words in the future. And I will do my best to be funnier as well. Much love to all
- James Gunn

It's something of an established fact that the treatment of Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown in recent years in DC has... been somewhat inconsistant. And complaining about it really at this point has become not so much flogging a dead horse, as beating it into a finer and finer paste.

The infuriating thing about the situation for a fan though, is how despite there being somewhat legitimate reasons for not including them, for a given value of "legitimate", the measures taken to ensure they don't appear have gone from being irritating to outright bizarre.

Today in Cringeworthy Comicbook Moments, I bring you a story from the Silver Age, where Superman uses timetravel to screw with a Native American who claims to have legal ownership of the land Metropolis is built on.

Sunday, 14 October 2012

As has been mentioned elsewhere, Cartoon Network has shelved DC Nation and its
affiliated episodes until January in order to (allegedly) arrange some
kind of anniversary celebration for the channel, thus meaning they're
filling the void with reruns of the How to Train Your Dragon tv show.

Personally
I'd have thought that if I was celebrating a milestone I'd do it with
new and exciting content, or at least repeats of iconic shows from the
past, but I guess that's why I'm not an executive and instead only write
about these things instead of having some control over them.

However,
a new theory has come to swirl around amit the confusion of the sudden
change, to wit: the entire DC Nation block was canned so they could edit
an appearance of Stephanie Brown out of Young Justice, or at least redo
her to make her an original character/Barbara Gordon.

Personally
I think that this a little silly, even with the things that DC has down
to suppress the characters (apparently Grant Morrison wrote them into
his Batman run, but DC made him edit them out in the rewrites), as it a)
goes against the "You can use anyone in our library" edict that they
told Greg Weisman back when he started the show, and b) they already
have Barbara Gordon in the show, having Steph editted into Babs would be
really weird, especially has YJ!Babs already has a defined personality
that ain't nothing like Steph's.

More information when I hear it,
but personally I think it's more due to some doofy CN executive with
bad timetabling than someone with a fetish for messing with Cass/Steph
fans.

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Ah, Arkham Asylum. Hospital for the mentally ill, prison for supervillains and the most mainstream HP Lovecraft reference in comicbooks! Now, when people talk about Arkham, it's normally connected in some manner with how Batman is "incompetant" in some way for not stopping the Joker, Killer Croc and company from routinely escaping from the alleged SuperMax facility whenever the mood strikes them.

Well today I've decided to have a look at the numerous ways that, really, it's really the Arkham members of staff who are at fault here, not just Batman not having the time to physically watch his rogues 24/7 to ensure they don't go walk about. Plus Halloween is coming up, and this is kind of good subject matter for the season.

Sunday, 30 September 2012

Before we begin the recap, here's a brief synopsis on what we've missed.

- Bart Allen has returned from the future under the guise of being a temporal tourist, when in actuality he showed up to prevent his grandfather, Barry Allen, death, under the hope that it will stop the titular alien invasion. It doesn't work.

- Superboy and Miss Martian broke up after he disapproved of her using her powers to mindwipe villains, and when he complained she attempted to erase his complaints from his mind. Since he has some resistance to mindcontrol now, this made him dump her. They still have feelings for each other though, which is something that made MM's new boyfriend, Lagoon Boy, somewhat insecure.

- Roy Harper and Cheshire got married and had a kid, and they eventually found the "real" Roy, who had been kept in cryogenic suspension after getting kidnapped by the Light shortly after beginning his superhero career.

- The Light have been kidnapping human runaways and sending them to an unknown alien ally with the intention of them discovering the Metagene, the thing that allows humans to have such a wide range of superpowers.

- Also, Artemis and Wally West are an item, and together with Aqualad, who is undercover in Black Manta's, his father, organisation they faked her death so that she could spy on the Light as well. In this same operation though, it resulted in Lagoon Boy being kidnapped by the Light, as the alternative was allowing him to be murdered by Black Manta's hired goons.

Sunday, 26 August 2012

From 2000 to roughly 2009, it was something of a golden age for me in regards to the kinds of stories in the Batman universe that were being published. There were the Cassandra Cain Batgirl stories, obviously, but with Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker and the like at the helm of the Bat Books, Gotham really began to shape itself up into being like an actual city, rather than being merely the backdrop where Batman punches bad guys. Stuff happened in the background when the superheroes and villains weren't present, and one of the best series in this regard was Rucka and Brubaker's Gotham Central.

Read Batman: Earth One, which is intended to be a "modernised" take on the character for a "new generation" of Batman fans. Like what All Star Batman was meant to be before Frank Miller went Wiseau and claimed that it was actually a comedy.

It fairs better than the Superman: Earth One comic, where Superman was reimagined as a gloomy hoodie wearing teenager in a move apparently targetted at the Emo or Twilight fan set, though maybe that's because a dark and brooding Batman is the standard model while when you try to write Superman the same way... things get weird.

Basic plot? Batman begins his campaign to investigate the death of his parents, mayorial candidate Thomas Wayne and his wife/campaign manager Martha Arkham-Wayne, who were killed in the middle of the election against theovertly corrupt mayor Oswald Cobblepot (never called the Penguin in-story, though they do reference him wearing a " trademark Penguin suit"). And while this is going on, former celebrity cop Harvey Bullock arrives in Gotham and is partnered up with the thoroughly beaten down Jim Gordon, loudly announcing that he's going to solve the Waynes' murder and get himself back in the limelight...

Overall, non-spoiler review? The art by Gary Frank is good, though occasionally a little dead-eyed, with the decision to actually show Bruce's eyes while he's in the costume actually improving how he emotions for the most part. The characterisation and dialogue worked for the most part, though there are some questionable things there.

Some parts worked, some didn't, and you could really tell that it was written by Geoff Johns in places, considering some of the stuff inserted into the story to make it more "mature". Brings some new things to the table and presents them in such a way that they work in unexpected ways. Would read again, though I'm looking forward to the sequel more, considering the hint that they dropped about various characters.

Saturday, 14 July 2012

Oh yeah, and Didio has confirmed that Smallville has been rewritten to have Nightwing be Barbara Gordon, not Stephanie. Because *grits teeth* Dick and Barbara are more Iconic, so as the more Iconic characters they (or rather She) has to be used before characters like Stephanie Brown can be introduced.